‘A Million Little Things’ finale features character undergoing assisted suicide
The ABC series “A Million Little Things” had its series finale this week, and it ended with a major character undergoing assisted suicide.
The show features a tight-knit group of friends who, at the start of the series, are horrified when one of their group members commits suicide. Two of the characters on the show, Gary and Maggie, are in a relationship and are both breast cancer survivors. Unfortunately for Gary, however, his cancer returned as lung cancer.
Instead of promoting hospice and palliative care, the showrunners decided to promote assisted death.
Gary is described as having lost any form of quality of life, confined to a hospital bed and unable to speak. However, his friends and wife, remain devoted to taking care of him. In a flashback, Gary is shown asking his friends for help to end it.
“Guys, I’m serious,” he said. “If by chance things go south, I don’t want to end up in some hospital bed sick, crapping myself and wasting away. So, if we get to that point — which isn’t let’s do it — I have to go see Kevin, okay? He’ll find out why you’re there.”
Kevin is a nurse who — apparently illegally — dispenses lethal drugs to help people kill themselves. Even though Gary’s friends protested, he insisted. “I’m not going to let Maggie watch me suffer and die from the same disease she fought twice,” Gary said. “It’s called death with dignity and that’s all I want.”
It’s interesting to note the consistency within the series, which both open and close with suicide.
While the first suicide is portrayed as what it should have been – a terrible tragedy – the second suicide is portrayed as acceptable and even good because Gary is sick. The show goes so far as to have a child push for Gary to die, saying, “As hard as it is, it’s the most humane thing we can do.” This is an example of clear discrimination against individuals with illnesses, whose suicides are considered brave, while the suicide of a ‘healthy’ individual is considered a tragedy.
In the end, Maggie drugs Gary with a deadly drug, and he takes it after saying a final goodbye to all his friends.
Assisted suicide and euthanasia became increasingly popular, with a propaganda campaign even proclaiming it as “beautiful and natural.” However, there is nothing beautiful or natural about suicide, and despite what pop culture portrays, most people do not undergo assisted suicide because they want to avoid a painful death. Statistics repeatedly found that most people choose assisted suicide because of the fear of losing autonomy and not being able to enjoy the same activities as before.
Furthermore, the drugs that cause assisted suicide are known to be painful, although the suffering is undetectable because the victim is first rendered paralytic. As explained by an expert, Dr. Joel Zivot, man can really “drown.”
It’s discriminatory for a show to start with a tragic suicide to, within five years, do a complete 180 to portray suicide as a good thing. It is likely that this exact thinking — that suicide can, in some circumstances, be good — may contribute to the increase in overall suicides occurring in countries where physician-assisted dying is legal.
